


Pride Goeth Before the Fall

by tersa (alix)



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Mage, Templar (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:26:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alix/pseuds/tersa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My submission for the 2012 Bioware Asunder Creative Writing Contest.</p><p>A struggling apprentice mage resists the temptations of three demons only to find her efforts are for naught.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pride Goeth Before the Fall

They were going to make her Tranquil.

Mallory watched the black-haired templar, Ser Travers, heating the brand in the coals as his brethren, faceless in their helmets, looked on. Her hands were bound behind her back, and a bead of moisture trickled down her cheek. _Why is this happening to me?_ She’d done everything they’d asked, studied hard, learned everything she’d been taught, but someone, somewhere, had deemed her deficient. Taken from her family, everything she knew, stuffed in a Tower, years of her life spent in terror—of the templars, of demons, of failure—and none of it was good enough.

 _What more could I have done?_ she railed.

_Burn them all._

The venomous voice whispered in her ear. It was not her thought, and that gave her pause. _Demon_.

 _They will make you Tranquil,_ it said, goading her, _for—what? Nothing you’ve done. Good, bad, you will be a soulless husk, just like the others. Embrace me, and you have a chance. Make them pay._ Hurt _them. What reason do you have to resist it any longer, if you are damned anyway?_

But there was a reason. As much as she feared the brand, she had learned to fear the demons more. The power was there, she felt it like the warmth of a fire, luring her closer, but the mindless anger she felt scrabbling on the surface of her mind, seeking purchase, frightened her.

 _I will not yield,_ she thought at it. _I have been good—will be good._ The brand was ready, and Ser Travers pulled it from the fire, approaching her. _I will be good. I will be good,_ she repeated like a litany, until she felt the searing heat.

She woke with a start and reared up from the bed with a gasp, a patina of cold sweat limning her bare skin. Beside her, someone stirred; she jumped again when a hand came to rest on her thigh under the blankets and a sleepy male voice asked, “What is it?”

In the dying embers of the hearth, she picked out dark hair on the pale pillow. _Ser Travers_ , came to her. “Nightmare,” she replied, looking away from him, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings. It was not her cell in the Tower, but a room in any hut in any village anywhere in Orlais, like the one she grew up in. “Where am I?”

He shifted to prop himself up on his elbow. “You don’t remember? That bad again?” He stroked her leg in a soothing motion. “We’re in our house.”

“ _Our_ house,” she echoed in confusion. “The Circle…”

“Far from here,” he interrupted. “For years now. You’re safe.”

At his words, memory bubbled up sluggishly, a vague sense of flight, of going to ground in a small village in the western steppes of the Frostbacks. Rubbing her forehead with her fingertips, she gave him a sharp glance, with sudden sure knowledge of his role in her escape, how he’d forsaken his vows as a templar to save her.

To _be_ with her.

She was naked, her skin pebbling in the air of the room, as was he, brushing up against her leg. Shyness blushed through her, but he seemed so at ease in her bed, that it eroded her own uncertainty. The fear of the dream was fading as his concern enveloped her. “Come back to bed, love,” he beckoned, stretching an arm up to take her hand in his to tug her down. “I promise you everything will be okay.”

Acquiescing, she slid back into the covers, allowing him to wrap an arm around her waist and pull her close, and felt the first stirrings of desire, pressed against him. As if sensing it, he cuddled her closer, his breath quickening as it flowed against her cheek. But the uncertainty refused to fade entirely, something niggling at the back of her mind.

_It’s too good to be true._

_Don’t question it,_ she argued with herself, even as Travers’s lips brushed against her mouth and set her aflame. _It’s what you always yearned for. Free of the Circle, a man who wants you. You’ve heard the stories before, why can’t you be living one?_

She had heard the stories before, but that’s just what they were—stories. Travers was kissing a path across her jawline, her body responding of its own volition to the attentions, but she dredged up the will to croak, “Stop.” And when he didn’t, his tongue tracing a line down her throat, she put her hands to his shoulders and pushed. “Stop!”

“Mallory?”

“This isn’t real.” Her voice was shaky, and she tried to steady it. “It can’t be. Templars don’t really leave the order, not to save a mage. I don’t remember any details, how we live, how we got this hut.” She shook her head, recoiling from him. “Anything.”

“Mallory…” This time, he was placating. “It’s real. Your nightmare, you’ve had it before, it makes you forget. You’ll remember in the morning.” He reached for her.

She pushed his hands away. “No. I know better. You’re a demon, trying to tempt me. I know I can’t have nice things like this, ever. You’re playing on what I wish I could have.”

Travers sighed, his expression turning hard. “Clever woman.” He shoved, and she went over the edge of the bed, felt herself falling.

Hitting the floor brought her awake with a snap and knocked the wind out of her. She lay in the rushes wheezing to catch her breath.

The door opened and Travers’s voice came through. “Enchanter Mallory?”

 _Enchanter_ perplexed her briefly, but she focused on untangling herself from the blankets and righting herself. Sunlight streamed through the tall narrow windows in one wall, illuminating the expansive room. She twitched her nightdress into propriety as she stood to find him peering at her suspiciously from the doorway. Glancing at the bed, she drew certain conclusions. “I must have rolled off while I slept.”

He eyed her. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready to go down to the hall.”

She blinked. “For what?”

“For your elevation to senior enchanter?” He smiled wryly. “Have you forgotten?”

 _Senior enchanter!_ She scrambled to find her robes. “Thank you, Ser Travers, I’ll be out shortly.”

She walked alone to the Great Hall, reveling in the act. How long she’d spent as an apprentice moving in small packs, constantly shadowed by templars waiting for the possibility of someone to show signs of forbidden magic or becoming an abomination. Even past her Harrowing, it was not uncommon to have an escort while crossing the halls of the Tower. It almost felt like freedom to hear her own footsteps on the stone of the floor. Was it any wonder that she had dreamed of temptations that night, on the anxious eve of such a momentous occasion?

The hall was already packed when she reached it. She’d seen enough of these in her years in the Tower to know what to do without being instructed, and she hurried up to the front where First Enchanter Edmonde stood favoring her with a paternal smile. After a faint gesture with his hand, she took the place indicated at the end of the row of enchanters being promoted, trying to calm the nerves that fluttered her stomach.

The First Enchanter intoned the ritual words then went down the line, gifting each of them with the symbol of their new rank until he reached her. Gone was the tiredness that had oft creased his face of late, as if invigorated by his task. He paused to put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing them gently. “After all the questions we had of you during your apprenticeship, this fills me with great pleasure. I’m so proud of you.”

His words struck a sour note that twanged in her thoughts. She remembered the whispers she’d overheard between her instructors, the suspicious looks from the templars, even the isolation from her fellow apprentices as she grew older and struggled with the lessons. She’d been determined to overcome those difficulties and prove them wrong—wasn’t this honor proof enough?

 _You_ are _worthy of being an enchanter. They were wrong about you._

The First Enchanter turned to take up the tokens from the silver salver borne by one of the junior mages. A warm glow banished the nervousness of her belly. _You deserve this. No one’s worked as hard as you’ve had to. You should be proud of your accomplishments._

 _Pride_. The sense of wrongness crystallized and cut through the glow, and she stumbled a step away. The First Enchanter turned to look at her with dismay. “Enchanter Mallory?”

“I—” She looked at him, _looked_ at him, and realized it wasn’t that his face was lacking the creases brought on by increasing tensions after the rebellion in Kirkwall, but age itself. This was the First Enchanter of her youth, when she was brought into the tower and a kind, beneficent man had welcomed her after the shock of being taken from her family and stuffed in a dungeon by the templars. Tears prickled her eyes as she put her hands up in warding. “No. _No_. You’re a demon, too. This—” she looked around the hall, at everyone watching her with the same consternation as the First Enchanter; at Ser Travers, stepping out of the crowd to approach her with a sorrowful expression on his countenance. She spoke to him, the familiar face from her dreams. “This is too much. I know I’m not strong enough to ever become a senior enchanter.”

“But you could,” he said kindly, stepping forward. “Wouldn’t it be better than losing yourself? What makes you who you are?”

“I—I can’t,” she stammered. “You would use me, make me hurt my friends.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said gently, taking another step to close the distance. “We could work together, you could wield the power and do all the good things you want to do as a full mage.”

He was almost close enough to touch, and the urge to do so was nearly overpowering. For so long, she’d seen Ser Travers watching her, and she’d hoped. Just one sympathetic templar could ease life in the Tower immeasurably. To have the demon using his guise to look at her with such tenderness threatened to undo her. But she was afraid. “That’s not what they teach us,” she said in a choked voice.

“They want to prevent the mages from having more power than they’re born with. They tell stories to scare mages like yourself from welcoming us in. They do not know what we spirits truly want. We want to be free, like you do, to taste life.” Another step, and she could feel the heat radiating off of him like standing too close to a fire, but she longed for it. “All you have to do is say yes, and you can have that.”

 _Yes._ “NO!”

Her eyes flew open. Ser Travers stood before her, still close, the glowing brand raised and pointed at her forehead, the other templars arranged behind him in a semi-circle. “Wait!” she pleaded. “I resisted! I was tempted by the demons and I resisted! I can be a good mage! I can pass the Harrowing! Please!”

His expression was implacable as the brand touched her skin, and she began screaming.


End file.
